When Desert Mountain takes its turn in May to host the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, there’s one player, Charlie Allen (and his partner, Mikey Russello) for whom to cheer. The reason is simple: It’s a home game for Charlie, who has played the Club’s courses hundreds of times, as the son of Members Tim and Julie Allen.
Charlie Takes Charge
From the age of 3 in his native Minnesota, Charlie Allen has loved the feel of a golf club in his hands. “We had a cabin in northern Minnesota, a very small town and one day Charlie was out on the putting green with this sawed-off, putt putt-style putter,” said Charlie’s dad, Tim Allen. “No way was he over three years old. We were inside having a pizza and some people came up and he followed them for the entire first hole, hitting his ball and I’m sure talking their ear off. Everybody was wondering, ‘Is he going to be alright?’ I said, ‘No, he’s just fine. You know all these people and there he is this high.”
Since then, Charlie has gotten taller—he now stands about 6’4”—and his PING golf clubs are considerably longer. Indeed, it was getting fitted for a new PING driver, acquired at a 2025 Desert Mountain Demo Day, that proved to be the springboard to his stellar play throughout the year. Nevertheless, it was those practice putting green sessions that date to his days as a toddler that fuel Charlie’s game. “I’m a pretty good putter,” he says. “That’s probably the strength of my game, and that’s been consistent my whole life.
Holed putts and low scores have been a constant through the years, including Charlie’s junior days. He fondly remembers his first tournament at age 5 or 6, played at Majestic Oaks in Minnesota. “I’ve loved the game since,” he says. Among his highlights were playing high school golf as a seventh grader, then moving to Arizona and playing all four years for Cactus Shadows High School. As a freshman on a team with all seniors, he helped his school claim the state title at the Omni Tucson National Resort, finishing second individually on his squad and ninth among all competitors.
In between his freshman and sophomore high school years, Charlie made the field at the venerable Arizona State Open, where he birdied seven of his 36 holes on rounds of 73-71 at Superstition Mountain’s Prospector course. After a break from competitive golf for several years, his recharged batteries led him to the September 8, 2025 qualifier at Papago for the 2026 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball. He had zero expectations.
“I had never played Four-Ball in competition,” chuckles Charlie. “And I only signed up for the qualifying because the national Four-Ball tournament was at Desert Mountain. And my friend Mikey, who I work with at Whisper Rock, has played here a fair amount, too. So, it was cool for us just to try. We didn’t have any expectation, honestly, of doing anything big in the qualifier because we hadn’t played in a while or in a Four-Ball setting. We kind of just went out thinking it was a home game and we ended up qualifying.”
Remarkably, Mikey was a late substitution. Charlie’s previous partner had to withdraw to attend a work meeting scheduled for that day. The formula for the pair’s success wasn’t complicated.
“Mikey hit it straight and I made a lot of putts.”
The boys had a target score in mind, which is the exact score they shot, 64. “We were just proud of each other. We get to play at our home course, our friends were caddying for us—the whole experience was just a lot of fun.”
Home game, indeed. Charlie has countless unforgettable memories from practicing and playing at Desert Mountain. “My first real memory was from the 10th hole on Apache. That was spring break of 2020 and we found out in an email that school back in Minnesota had shut down for the semester because of COVID. My eighth grade year was done. We didn’t know what was going to happen.”
A more positive recollection took place a year later, when Charlie’s Minnesota friends came out for spring break to his new home in Arizona. Playing together at No. 7 at Desert Mountain, Charlie aced the ninth hole.
Charlie estimates he’s played Cochise 100 times over the past five and a half years and likely has made 150 trips around Outlaw. He likes Cochise as a host for the Four-Ball because there are multiple birdie opportunities. “If you’re hitting it well, you can really score on Cochise,” he says. “Outlaw is pretty hard. If you’re hitting it well at Outlaw, you can still manage not to shoot a great score because the greens are really tough.”
Proud Parents
Tim and Julie Allen have been Desert Mountain Club Members for five and a half years. They credit the pandemic for steering them to North Scottsdale. “We lived in Minnesota our whole lives,” said Julie. “We came down here for many years visiting friends in Anthem. They decided to join Desert Mountain and we came down for spring break in 2020, the COVID time. We went back home for one week, and Minnesota shut down. So we rented a place here for six weeks and never went back.”
Julie’s favorite course is Apache, because it’s more forgiving, and yields better scores. Tim’s pick is Outlaw, for exactly the opposite reason. “You have to control your shots on Outlaw,” he says. “You have to control your spin. You can use creativity. It’s penalizing and challenging.”
Both Julie and Tim beamed with pride when Charlie reported the results from the Four-Ball Qualifier at Papago, even if they expressed their joy differently. “I knew Charlie was playing in a golf tournament that particular day—not unusual. He plays in a lot of different golf tournaments,” remembers mom. “I was frustrated because I was trying to get a hold of him and I couldn’t understand why he shut his phone off, because he never shuts his phone off. And then I realized why, after he came home and said that he won this tournament. I had no idea how big of a deal it was. And I thought, hallelujah, you shut off your phone and you won the tournament! But at that point, I still didn’t really know what it meant. Now I do. It was so much fun.”
For Tim, there was a quiet inevitability about Charlie’s accomplishment. “It’s well deserved,” says dad. “He puts the work in and it paid off.”
In the lead up to the Four-Ball, Charlie has a legitimate distraction, having recently broken the middle finger on his right hand. Two screws were put in, but as of mid-March, it’s mending nicely and he’s confident he’ll be ready to go for the glory. Sleeping in his own bed and enjoying unequaled familiarity with the host courses certainly gives an edge to young Charlie and his good friend and partner, Mikey.
Click here to learn more about the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship.Let the competition begin!
This story was originally written by Joe Passov, a Golf Writers Association of America (GWAA) award-winning journalist. Read the article in the Spring 2026 issue of Inside Desert Magazine.
